NABET-CWA Guaranteed a Spot at Olympic Games

NABET-CWA has negotiated an unprecedented agreement with NBC to provide union-represented engineering personnel for the network's Olympic telecasts through the 2004 Summer Games in Athens, Greece.

The agreement also covers the 2000 Summer Games in Sydney, Australia, and the 2002 Winter Games in Salt Lake City, Utah, and provides for NBC to assign no fewer than a total of 375 NABET-CWA-represented technicians to each event.

The deal assures that NBC will not be targeted for job actions during the Olympic Games, which are high-profile events that are expected to be major moneymakers, according to Nick Madigan in Daily Variety.

"The Peacock (NBC) doubtless learned from the experience of ABC, whose NABET-CWA-represented employees have been without a contract since March 1997," Madigan wrote, adding, "In response to the lack of progress, NABET members have repeatedly threatened to scuttle ABC's major televised events, and in November succeeded in causing ABC to cancel live coverage of the Tour Championship Golf tournament in Houston."

NABET-CWA President John Clark and Network Coordinator John Krieger, who headed up the bargaining team that worked out the agreement, said the union and NBC also agreed to meet later, once sites have been selected, to discuss similar coverage for the 2006 and 2008 Olympic Games.

Clark expressed hope that the "positive momentum and spirit of cooperation" displayed at the bargaining table on the issue of Olympics coverage will carry over into NABET-CWA contract negotiations with NBC in 1999.

The agreement spells out base rates of pay, regular workdays, overtime, travel time, transportation, lodging, per diem payments, payback days, and work space and credentials for NABET-CWA representatives at the site of the Olympic Games.

Also representing the union in the talks in New York City were Louis Fallot, president of Local 11, New York City; James Harvey, president of Local 31, Washington, D.C., Ray Taylor, president of Local 41, Chicago, Joseph Champa, president of Local 53, Burbank, Calif., and William Freeh, vice president of Local 11.